Peacebuilding Evaluation Consortium: Proving the Effectiveness of Global Peacebuilding Programs

Washington, DC, April 15, 2015 --(PR.com)-- The Peacebuilding Evaluation Consortium (PEC) is pleased to announce a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York (the Corporation) that will help answer the complicated question: “Does peacebuilding work?” This ground-breaking grant will allow a consortium of the field’s most experienced evaluation experts to advance new methodologies for measuring peace, and create a dynamic community around issues of learning and evaluation.

“The PEC is a highly dynamic partnership, which is revolutionizing how we think about learning and impact in the field of peacebuilding. I predict that we will look back on this work as a watershed moment in unravelling the most difficult questions about ‘what works’ in peacebuilding,” according to AfP President & CEO Melanie Greenberg.

With an initial grant from the Carnegie Corporation in 2011, the Peacebuilding Evaluation Consortium has convened an unprecedented open dialogue with peacebuilding policymakers, practitioners, scholars, and donors to address the unique and systemic challenges of evaluating peacebuilding. Led by the Alliance for Peacebuilding, the PEC is the combined effort of Besa: Catalyzing Strategic Change, CDA Collaborative Learning, Mercy Corps, Search for Common Ground (SFCG), and the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).

Despite significant strides in the field of peacebuilding evaluation in the past decade, the field continues to struggle over how to determine the impact of its programs, specifically in complex conflict regions. This innovative collaboration aims to support the advancement of the field’s evaluation methodologies, deepen shared learning and transparency across organizations and sectors, and translate the technical findings around best practices into policy-relevant recommendations.

“Grantmakers have long wrestled with the challenge of evaluating the impact of the projects they support. This is especially true in the inherently complex and multidimensional peacebuilding field, which often deals, literally, with matters of life and death. The PEC has broken new ground in this field, and provided invaluable assistance to both practitioners and grantmakers, alike, in their efforts to promote peace,” says Stephen Del Rosso, Program Director, International Peace and Security, International Program at the Carnegie Corporation.

This new round of funding from the Corporation is its third grant to the Alliance for Peacebuilding, a reflection of the Corporation’s sustained commitment to establishing a culture of learning and evidence around peacebuilding, and to developing a strong knowledge base in a rapidly expanding and diverse field.

With the Corporation’s support, the PEC tackles new strategies—from neuroscience to systems design—for measuring the impact of peacebuilding at the personal, regional, and global levels, and developing principles for effective practice in a wide range of complex contexts. The PEC is unique in its integration of peacebuilding practitioners, donors, policymakers, and scholars—all working for a greater cumulative effect in programs and substantive outcomes.

About the Peacebuilding Evaluation Consortium

The Peacebuilding Evaluation Consortium (PEC) is a field-wide effort to address the common challenges to measuring the outcomes, results, and impact of peacebuilding programs. Since 2013, the PEC has made significant, collective strides in establishing a cooperative framework that supports better monitoring and evaluation in the short term and builds evidence of peacebuilding’s impact in the long term. It has specifically contributed to shifts in the ways several key donors and practitioners design and implement M&E for their programs, promoted collaboration on specific M&E tools, and increased shared learning among researchers and practitioners around the world.

With funding from the GHR Foundation, the PEC is currently implementing a three-year initiative - the Effective Inter-religious Action in Peacebuilding Program (EIAP) - that aims to sharpen the effectiveness of inter-religious peacebuilding by focusing on improving measurement.

About Alliance for Peacebuilding

Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP) is the leading institutional home for the most dynamic peacebuilding organizations and practitioners in the US and around the world. With nearly 100 organizational members and 1,000 individual practitioners working in applied conflict prevention and resolution in 153 countries, AfP is a global membership organization that amplifies the strength of its members and forges collaboration and innovation around issues too large for any one organization to tackle by itself.

AfP plays a leadership role in engaging a multitude of sectors including policymakers, funders, the military, and a broad range of related disciplines, developing innovative approaches to peacebuilding. By uniting policymakers with local voices to build policy solutions that reflect on-the-ground realities, training military leaders in peacebuilding principles that prioritize human security, and pioneering solutions that embrace the complexity of the issues at hand, AfP shapes the peacebuilding field as it continues to realize its mission of advancing sustainable peace and security worldwide.

About Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY)

Founded in 1911 by Andrew Carnegie, the Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY) works to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding around the world. From its earliest days, CCNY has invested significant resources in programs promoting a more secure, peaceful, and prosperous world, with the International Peace and Security Program serving as a key pillar of that mission. CCNY’s investments in this area seek to elicit and apply local knowledge, foster current and future experts, and utilize focused research and recommendations for improved policies and to foster general understanding of peace and security.